Needs balance, respect for readers

Erv Hogland’s Wednesday letter said eloquently what I’ve been thinking for awhile about the relentless march to the left in newspapers such as The Herald. I’m the kind of reader you want. I read three newspapers per day and have done so for many years. However, I, like at least half of your readers, didn’t vote for Obama, don’t think legalizing marijuana was such a good idea, and have other views than Planned Parenthood’s on “women’s health issues.”

I understand that the owners of the paper hired you because they like your “progressive” views but must almost every item on the opinion page drearily hew to one ideology? Your bias bleeds all over the rest of the paper, unfortunately. It shows in the stories you choose to report (or the ones you ignore), the slant you give to the information, the headlines you use. For example, the headline you chose for Mr. Hogland’s letter, “The Herald: Like many papers, simply too liberal,” is misleading. He did not say your paper was too liberal, he said it lacks balance. He’s eager to read a paper with a variety of views and regrets that he can no longer find them in The Herald.

Keep treating readers like me with contempt and you’ll lose us too. Then you can knock yourself out preaching to an ever-shrinking choir.